Reframing Disability Funding In India

Disability non-profit organisations (NPOs) in India fill important gaps in government programmes through grassroots implementation and community-based support, helping translate rights and policy commitments into lived realities for persons with disabilities.Approximately 68,724 non-profits in India work across the disability sector, constituting 10% of the country’s registered non-profit ecosystem. Their work spans education, livelihoods, rehabilitation, accessibility, advocacy, and community-based support. Despite this substantial footprint, disability remains one of the most under-resourced areas of social investment. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funding for disability is estimated at only 1% of total CSR spending, while India’s combined Union and state disability budget amounts to 0.04% of GDP. This is well below countries in the Global South such as Brazil and South Africa, and below OECD averages (2%). Even a recent UNICEF benchmark recommends that 0.1–0.5% of GDP be allocated to disability-related interventions.The government funding and CSR figures critically point to more than a funding gap in India. They reflect how disability sits within the country’s broader development funding architecture, across public budgets, philanthropic priorities, regulatory frameworks, and financing instruments.Pacta’s recent study on the landscape of funding for disability in India drew on 11 funder interviews, seven focus group discussions with 26 disability non-profits, a survey with 52 disability NPOs, and secondary data on 147 organisations. The study points to a sector with deep community knowledge and sustained institutional experience, working within a funding architecture that does not yet fully support the scale, complexity, and time horizon of disability inclusion.India’s disability sector operates within a low-investment equilibrium. Limited public allocation, low philanthropic funding, and constrained organisational capacity reinforce one another.Public funding dominates India’s social sector, with the government contributing around 95% compared to 5% from private philanthropy. Government signals matter. When public systems visibly back and substantially fund a sector, they create legitimacy, continuity, and confidence for other funders.However, the funding mix reported by disability NPOs reflects a different story. In Pacta’s survey of 52 disability NPOs, individual donors were cited as funders by 40 organisations and CSR by 38. Philanthropic foundations were cited as funders by 26 organisations, while government funding was reported by only 14. This shows that public funding is not uniformly accessible, and that many organisations continue to rely on fragmented or relationship-driven funding sources.Government and philanthropy bring different but complementary strengths to the disability ecosystem. Government brings scale, public systems, long-term continuity, and the ability to embed inclusion within schemes and institutions. Philanthropy brings flexibility, risk appetite, and the ability to support early-stage ideas before they attract larger institutional backing.This complementarity is the core of the government-philanthropy jugalbandi. Government signalling creates visibility and confidence. Philanthropy can then support experimentation, evidence generation, and institutional capacity that public systems may later scale or institutionalise.This reinforcing cycle is visible in sectors such as education and healthcare, which receive significant government expenditure and attract substantial CSR and philanthropic funding. Of the 38 CSR-supported disability organisations in the survey, 33 worked on livelihoods and 30 on education. Government funding reached fewer organisations and was concentrated amongst those engaged in programs of therapy, education, and livelihoods or persons with disability. Rights-based work, research, advocacy, sports, recreation, and systemic reform in disability remain poorly funded by governments and philanthropists alike.Disability funding data in the social sector is overall invisible. On the private side, databases such as the Hurun India Rich List track high-net-worth individuals (HNIs) and ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNIs), their wealth sources, and their philanthropic interests, but do not tag disability-specific giving data. On the public side, a majority of government budgetary allocations for disability are not explicitly stated. Only Assam and three central ministries provide disability-disaggregated budgets, and more than half of major family surveys in India do not capture disability-disaggregated data. Monitoring systems also remain thin: The Aspirational Districts Programme tracks 49 key performance indicators, but disability does not appear as a standalone performance category, except for one skilling-related indicator. NITI Aayog’s Output-Outcome Monitoring Framework also rarely treats disability as a disaggregated outcome category. Despite a 2016 circular mandating disability-friendly infrastructure under Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS), the absence of any disability-specific reporting in subsequent annual reports or the sector-wise dashboard reveals a scheme long on directive and short on delivery.The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act (RPwD), 2016 already mandates 5% reservation in poverty alleviation and development schemes, with priority to women with benchmark disabilities. Stronger implementation and tracking of this mandate can create clearer public signals. But mandates on paper cannot be a substitute for accountability in practice. Disability-disaggregated budgeting, adopting disability outcome indicators across all ministries, and strong monitoring and evaluation are necessary steps. Regular convenings such as the Purple Fest that bring together public agencies, philanthropic funders, researchers, innovators, disability NPOs, and persons with disabilities, also help to change mental models. The World Bank estimates that excluding persons with disabilities costs India between 3–7% of GDP annually through lost productivity, reduced household incomes, and increased social protection costs. The purple economy is an emerging terminology recognising that persons with disabilities are productive and contributing citizens. A changed approach towards recognising the value of the purple economy when enforced top-down is likely to unlock more philanthropic investments in disability, just as we are witnessing in ageing and mental health today. (The views expressed are personal)This article is authored by Nivedita Krishna, founder and Kaye Lushington, lead - research, Pacta.